Reinstalling Windows with RAID Card Attached

[commissarmo]

Looking for whether this makes sense:

1. My OS drive failed, and I want to reinstall Win7 on a temporary HDD to boot the machine.

2. However, I have a PCI Hardware RAID Controller (Adaptec) on the machine which is a RAID 10/SSD with data on it.

3. Should I disconnect this RAID Controller before attempting to install the OS onto the new HDD? I was under the impression that it shouldn't matter since I will boot from Optical Drive, install the OS on the temp HDD, and then when I reboot, the RAID Card BIOS should load per usual prior to the OS, and once I get into to the OS, it should be displayed as a volume.

4. Does this make sense? Or should I be disconnecting the RAID card prior to doing anything to prevent anything from happening to the RAID card?

5. I haven't worked with this system yet as I wanted to make sure my logic on this was sound first...

Thanks for any comments.

 

[FireWire2]

I would recommend remove the RAID card
After that, then put back the RAID card and reload the drivers, this is the simplist

You can install with RAID card, of course, that is not that difficult, just a extra step that you dont want to encounter, when it asked RAID drivers

 

[popatim]

Does your raid card show drives a t a dos level or does it need drivers? If its dos level then windows install will see it and may write boot files to it.
If windows needs drivers to see it then just dont install the drivers until after windows is installed.

 

[commissarmo]

My RAID card is an Adaptec 2405 - I'm not really sure if it shows at 'DOS' level or not - it does have its own BIOS which loads prior to the OS loading, but it also has management software you can install.

This RAID volume is NOT a boot drive - it's just a filesystem with data on it. Are you saying the OS would attempt to write to this volume?! That could prove disastrous - in that case I would feel safer unplugging the RAID card volume. My concern was that this could disrupt the RAID volume, but I suppose since the OS is getting reinstalled, it shouldn't matter?

 

[FireWire2]

My RAID card is an Adaptec 2405 - I'm not really sure if it shows at 'DOS' level or not - it does have its own BIOS which loads prior to the OS loading, but it also has management software you can install.

This RAID volume is NOT a boot drive - it's just a filesystem with data on it. Are you saying the OS would attempt to write to this volume?! That could prove disastrous - in that case I would feel safer unplugging the RAID card volume. My concern was that this could disrupt the RAID volume, but I suppose since the OS is getting reinstalled, it shouldn't matter?

You are safe to remove the card and re-insert back when done with OS installation